Now that hybrid work is here to stay, organizations are looking to reorganize their business communications stacks. One of the most important tools to have for businesses of all sizes is a full-featured video conferencing platform.
Let’s look at why top-quality technology is so important and what video conferencing features work-from-wherever organizations need to support employee engagement, better communications, and collaboration.
Why Hybrid Teams Need Software that Elevates the Meeting Experience
While Zoom might have filled in the gaps for some teams at the onset of the pandemic – daily participants on Zoom skyrocketed from 10 million at the end of 2019 to 300 million in April of 2020 – many companies are looking for a solution that’s more secure and engaging for employees in the long term.
The reality is that the bulk of meetings will be virtual in a few years. Gartner predicts that only 25 percent of work meetings will take place in person in 2024. That will be a problem if companies are still relying on a technology that’s associated with problems like Zoom fatigue and Zoombombing.
Hybrid teams require a platform that’s useful, easy to use, and that takes the concept of the business meeting to a whole new level. In 2021, IDC estimated that 90 percent of businesses in North America would increase their spending on video conferencing as users search for a solution that offers more business value.
When you break it down, what they’re looking for is technology that makes a virtual meeting more than ‘just another meeting’.
7 Important Video Conferencing Features
Here are the key features hybrid teams need to get the most out of their virtual business meetings.
1. High-Quality Video
Productive meetings require crystal clarity so participants feel like they’re in the room with each other, no matter how far away everyone is.
HD video conferencing creates a more realistic experience, which is important for helping co-workers develop trust among one another and encouraging a more collaborative virtual environment. It’s also a must-have for client-facing video meetings such as sales pitches and webinars – you want people to have a positive impression of your brand after every experience, whether they’re a potential customer or an employee.
2. Integrated Audio Options
Your users should be able to join by phone or computer, allowing them to participate from wherever with the same call quality. Your software should generate conference call numbers and PINs as well as custom meeting URLs to make it easy for everyone to join.
3. Active Talk Indicator
In larger meetings, it’s not always easy to figure out who’s talking. As a result, some people might be spending their energy trying to figure out who’s speaking rather than listening to what’s being said – which means they’re less likely to engage in the conversation.
But with the Active Talk Indicator, the current speaker is identified by a chat indicator. This feature is also helpful when someone’s mic is picking up background noise. Instead of wasting time trying to figure out who it is or stopping the meeting to address the noise, the individual with the background noise will know to mute themselves, or the host can mute them so the meeting can continue uninterrupted.
4. Screen Annotation and Sharing
Screen and application sharing enables more interactive meetings. Anyone should be able to share their screen, and all participants can then highlight parts of the screen or draw attention to the specific information they’re talking about.
Being able to do this in real-time lets the meeting move forward seamlessly and keeps everyone more engaged.
5. Meeting Recording
With hybrid teams, everyone’s not going to be available for every meeting. But with a feature that lets you record the full meeting and easily share it, anyone who wasn’t able to attend can watch the full meeting at another time. A recording feature is also great if anyone wants to review the meeting later to better familiarize themselves with what was said.
If your organization expects to record meetings regularly, make sure your video conferencing solution offers unlimited cloud storage.
6. Meeting Notes
Instead of expecting everyone to make personal notes during the meeting, with advanced video conferencing software, you can capture action items, next steps, and key points in real time. You can save even more time if your software automatically sends these meeting notes to all participants after the meeting.
The advantage of being able to generate shared meeting notes is that everyone will walk away with the same information – that means everyone is on the same page regarding what was decided during the meeting and what any next steps might be.
7. Group and Private Chat Features
Questions and comments will inevitably come up during meetings, so you’ll want robust chat functionality to funnel this information. With group chat, people can post questions for everyone to see and answer or share information, such as links to resources brought up during the meeting.
The private chat feature is useful when a participant needs to say something or ask a question, but doesn’t want to involve the entire group or slow down the flow of the meeting.
Make Your Meetings More Effective with Feature-Rich Video Conferencing Technology
Putting people face to face isn’t enough. For companies with hybrid teams, video conferencing has to have features that make remote collaboration feel seamless and empowered. Intermedia AnyMeeting has all these features and more – get a quote today and start empowering your hybrid teams with more effective meetings.
The Intermedia Team
Intermedia helps businesses of all sizes connect better – through voice, video conferencing, chat, contact center, business email and productivity, file sharing and backup, security, archiving, and more – from wherever, whenever. And, as a partner-first company, Intermedia goes to work for our channel partners to help them grow their revenue and maximize their success.
March 21, 2022
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